RC Lakewood BOE Interview The Lakewood Scoop

foreign my name is Rachel Browning I'm the transportation compliance and safety officer for Lakewood Board of Ed basically what we're going to do today is discuss bring any safety Communications and transportation issues how many students are we bussing a day in Lakewood our public schools are doing 6 000 and our non-publics are a little over 40 000 every day what is your role at Lakewood Board of Ed so I do safety and compliance basically what that means is we want the bus drivers to be safe so we're looking to make sure that the practices at the schools are safe on the road are safe as well as at bus stops making sure that they're being picked up the way that they're supposed to or dropped off the way they're supposed to after about a year and a half on the job now what's your general impression of this situation um I think that we we have a really good team between the board about the lsta and the vendors I think that we could really put this together to make sure that we're setting everyone up for success what are the three most common safety compliance issues you have seen since you were hired last spring and how have you been working to improve the situation I think that one of the biggest that I've seen in is probably the least talked about is a non-crossable street how many roads in Lakewood that people don't realize the bus drivers aren't supposed to drop a child and the child walks across the street from the side of the bus what are the safety protocols in place regarding driver background checks that people may not know about it's heavily vetted the bus company does everything on their end a lot of their background checks and all that is sent to us and we look it over before we allow a driver to work so you can't have a bus company hire somebody day one and say hey this driver is going to work for us and take a public school or a non-public school route it has to be all sent in and approved by the Board of Ed before they can do that what are some of the guidelines that you want the parent body to know you're enforcing with the bus companies yes we're looking to know that the bus drivers are dropping children where they're supposed to be that they're on time we want to make sure that the routes are getting completed as they're supposed to be done now once children are dropped off their bus drivers are checking to make sure that all of their kids have been unloaded and that's going to take care of most of the issues that we see day to day what happens if you know the bus driver is in violation of safety guidelines uh so what we do is we don't go out to a driver and you know have an issue with them we come back we speak between the transportation managers as well as the lsta and we have a conversation we record the infraction and we make sure that you know we speak to the dispatchers in the company to prevent it going forward where can parents find the full list of guidelines that school drivers are supposed to adhere to at all times so it's between uh New Jersey's transportation's website we also have our bids our bids pretty much outline exactly what the company is supposed to do day in and day out and what they can and can't do okay so if a parent calls in and they've got a problem now they got a call in what information do you need from them for a safety query as much as they can give us bus number where the stop was what time did it happen all the buses are outfitted with GPS and cameras so if we have to investigate a complaint all that information will help what is the current penalty if in place if a driver allows students off at the wrong stop or onto the wrong bus so any unauthorized stops which is what that would fall on there would be a 500 penalty parents sometimes need to switch a child those roots or or stops due to a family emergency or other need so what's the process for making this change if a child in the household has such such a situation on the public school side you'd come in and you'd fill out a form and that'll basically be a change of address or a babysitter form if you needed to go that route and that can take up to a week we try to do it as fast as we can we have to try to also make sure that the vendors can adjust their routes before we just change everything up so that's why it may take a little bit longer than the next day we've got to do things as fast as possible the district now mandates extra phone access for September during the start of the Year from the vendors where do parents find their colon number for their school route and Driver your best bet is to call the Board of Education my phone number 732-364 28 400. how are you finding this expanded focus on safety compliance being accepted by the providers I don't think that anybody in this part of the process between the Board of Education to the transportation department to the vendor nobody wants any unsafe practices there's so much on the line that bus drivers want their job they want the kids to be safe the owners want they want any insurance claims or anything like that and we also want our kids safe day in and day out what are some of the issues that are not your area of focus what should people not be coming to you for yeah I mean I don't want to discourage anybody from reaching out to us everyone should even if they feel like it's not significant reach out and we'll try to help you feel better about the situation in any way that we can but there are certain things like a bus stop that is within the parameters that you may not like or may be different from the year before those types of situations are just out of the control we try to Route the buses as best as possible to get the kiss on a normal basis and how to save time in the past there have been instances where kids have been found on the bus after a route was completed or some other types of the type of mix-up like that how is this matter being addressed so from the state if you if that happens to a bus the bus driver gets a six-month suspension on their CDL if that happens for a second time it's an indefinite suspension of the CDL they'll never get their CDL back we've got parents from a lot of different backgrounds in the district we have people that are more familiar with different languages what are the languages that you speak that people can feel comfortable talking to you in if you call me you can call or text so reading and writing in English or Spanish I'm fully fluent foreign and we do that in the transportation office as well we always have someone that speaks English and Spanish terrific how about Yiddish I don't have Yiddish yet just all the good words okay great